


it starts in daylight

by missymeggins



Category: Life (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-26
Updated: 2010-11-26
Packaged: 2019-05-02 12:58:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14545263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missymeggins/pseuds/missymeggins





	it starts in daylight

  
  
_it starts in daylight_. **Life** ; crews/reese. Post _One_. 3,168 words. pg  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
As she sits in the car, traveling towards him in the glaring light and watches him stand there looking at the sky, her only thought is that they're alive and everything else means nothing. 

But later, when standing in an orange grove with the taste of her impending death bitter in the back of her throat is just a distant memory, she discovers things she never expected to discover. 

It turns out that love is actually a concept Dani Reese understands all too well. 

 

 

 

They tell her to take two weeks leave to recover while they deal with the administrative nightmare they've been left with. When she argues with them, telling them she's fine and has no need for time off they tell her she has no choice, _they_ have no choice; it's just how the department works in the aftermath of such events. 

(They tell Crews the same thing but he just nods and quietly gathers a few items from his desk before leaving. He doesn't say a word.)

She hates the word _aftermath_. They use it like it _means_ something, like it's an anomaly that needs to be dealt with carefully; as if she hasn't spent her whole life living in the _aftermath_. Of her childhood and her father's disdain; of her own efforts at self destruction – the drugs, the booze and the men, all of it. Her job means living in the aftermath of other people's tragedies and she wonders how easily they could forget that they do the same. Aftermath is a meaningless concept for people like them.

Sometimes when she thinks about what she does day after day she knows that all that tragedy should be exhausting. But by now she's learnt to live in it; it's what she knows and it's who she is. Which is why she's not used to _feeling_ so much. With her job she feels the weight of death every single day. 

_This_ shouldn't feel like anything.

She's alive.  

 

 

 

 

Three days of sitting in her apartment, dodging Tidwell's calls, teaches her something. She's capable of missing people. Or at least, she's capable of missing _him_.

She doesn't bother calling first, she just gets in her car and drives until she's standing on his doorstep and he's looking at her with surprise in his eyes – and maybe something else she can't quite identify. 

But he leads her inside, hand on the small of her back and she catches herself idly wondering when  she stopped caring if he touched her. 

 

 

 

They're standing in his kitchen on opposite sides of the kitchen island and the silence is quietly torturing her.

(She doubts she'll ever tell anybody – Dani Reese doesn't tell secrets – but the worst part of it all was the silence. She was okay when Roman came to talk to her, taunt her; she knew how to fight back in those moments. But when they left her alone, in the dark, she began to hear Crews' voice chattering inside her head and that should have been a good thing but it was eclipsed by the fear that he wouldn't find her. And that scared her more than any threat Roman could make.)

“Fruit?” he offers and it's more of an automatic gesture than anything else; he knows she never eats fruit but he asks anyway because it's something he understands. It's what he uses to distract himself from the chaos and the last few days have been so full of chaos they still echo through these quiet moments and she can see it in his face. 

But this time she thinks that fruit is probably a good idea.

(It's sort of hard to understand the world when you've been kidnapped by the FBI and your partner, who you never even _liked_ is someone you miss now that you're not seeing him everyday, and you can still smell gasoline in the air. Fruit is simple; it's sensible and for the first time in longer than she can remember, Dani wants to be sensible. She wants to be Mi >safe</i>.)

“Sure,” she replies, knowing full well this will raise his eyebrows. Except that it doesn't. He just cuts her a slice of orange and hands it to her silently as though this is completely normal, even though it's actually the complete opposite. 

He's been quiet all night and it's not that she doesn't understand his reticence, it's just that she doesn't really know what to do in the face of it. He's usually the one who does the talking. She thinks maybe silence is what he wants right now but she's never been good at anticipating or catering to other people's needs. 

(She knows she can be selfish sometimes. It's one of the things that made becoming a junkie all too easy. And what made getting sober that much harder.)

She also realises that part of the problem is that she hasn't _wanted_ to cater to anyone's needs for a long time. She used to try, with her father, a long, long time ago. But she learned quickly that a daughter could never be what Jack Reese needed. So then she tried to fill the void for her mother, be reliable and good, everything her father seemed incapable of being as a husband, only to discover that her mother was blind to her husband's faults. After that Dani stopped trying to be anything to anyone. 

Now though, she looks at him and although she doesn't understand it exactly, something has changed for her. It's like her relationship with him is now in clear focus where before it was blurry and undefined.

What she understands now is this: it's not because he saved her or because the FBI nearly made her doubt him; it's just that he's _Crews_ and he matters to her and she has to do something to make things okay again. She needs him to be _Crews_ again, to talk her ear off about Zen, try and convince her to eat fruit, ask if he can drive even though he knows the answer will always be 'no'. 

“Okay, that's it,” she decides suddenly, startling him with her voice. “Fruit isn't gonna cut it. You need a drink.”

“Reese,” he says warningly, and she can actually see the worry in his eyes. She knows he remembers all too clearly the way she begged him not to let her fall, remembers the way she slurred her words and the way she turned up on his doorstep one day only to end up on the floor of his bathroom with her head over the toilet bowl. 

She knows he never wants to see her like that again but it's okay because she knows now that neither does she. 

“I said _you_ need a drink Crews. I don't,” she tells him firmly, adding “I won't do anything stupid, I promise,” for his benefit rather than her own. He needs reassurance and she understands that.

“Besides, it's a bar. I'm sure they can find me some fruit,” she tells him wryly.

He smiles at her ever so briefly but the overwhelming look on his face tells her he thinks this is close to the worst idea she's ever had. Still, he sighs, says “Okay. But I think you should drive,” and tosses her his keys. 

 

 

 

  
“Just don't let me fall Reese,” he says quietly, slurring just a little, and it's disconcerting to hear him echo the words she said so long ago. She didn't like hearing it from her own lips but somehow it's even worse hearing it from his because he's supposed to be the one who believes in hope, in healing and living in the present instead of the past and all of that other Zen crap that she so studiously tries to ignore. 

(It never seems to work though, his words creep into her consciousness at the oddest of moments.)

They're stumbling out of a bar and she's holding him up, her arm around his waist and his around her shoulder. It should feel odd, unnatural somehow, because Dani doesn't do this; she's always the one stumbling. Except it doesn't feel unnatural, it feels like it makes sense because Charlie Crews has been doing this for her in a thousand different ways for over a year and she's only just begun to realise it. 

He got her out of the SUV and he put himself in that SUV just to do it. That fact is burned into her mind and though she doesn't yet know everything that it means, she knows one important fact, which up until that point had never really felt definite for her, and that is that Crews is her partner. 

He's held her up for over a year. 

Now it's her turn. 

 

 

 

She sleeps in his spare room.

She tells herself it's because she's too tired to drive home but really it's because after she tossed him onto his bed in a drunken stupor, she walked downstairs and looking at his absurdly large front door, she realised that she simply didn't want to go back to her apartment. 

Right now she just wants to be near him. She thinks back to the orange grove and how as she walked toward him, all she wanted to do was reach out and take his hand, but Roman robbed her of that comfort. 

She's taking it back now and she writes Crews a note that says, _“I'm sleeping in your spare room. Just you know”_ , slips it under his door for him to find in the morning, pulls on a shirt from the closet and slides herself under the covers of his absurdly large guest bed. 

(There's a lot of things in his house that are absurdly large, she thinks as she drifts off to sleep.)

In the morning she wakes to the sound of gentle knocking and mumbles “come in”, still half asleep and forgetting where she is. The sight of Charlie, shirtless and slightly dishevelled, jolts her back to consciousness. 

“Hey,” she says, sitting up as he shifts awkwardly in the doorway. 

“Hi,” he says softly. “I made breakfast. If you're hungry.”

“Thanks,” she says, swinging her legs out of the bed and freezing for a moment when she realises all she's wearing is his shirt and she's baring more of her legs than is probably appropriate under the circumstances. 

But then she realises she just doesn't give a damn and it doesn't even matter because his eyes haven't shifted once since she stood up; he's still looking at her face. 

He doesn't move even as she walks toward him but when she reaches the doorway he shifts just slightly, turning his body to face hers and somehow there's barely any space between them, despite large door frame which they're standing. 

“Thank you Dani,” he almost whispers pausing for a moment like he's trying to find the right words for them. “For last night.”

“Any time Crews,” she tries to say casually, but her breath catches in her throat because he's so damn close to her and she just wants to feel his skin, know that he's real. 

He does it for her, closing the little space there is between them by gently pulling her right up against him, hand on the small of her back as he leans down and presses a gentle kiss to her lips. 

She breathes in and the air smells like oranges and it's making her a little dizzy. When she opens her eyes he's put a little distance between them and he just looks at her until she shakes her head a little, trying desperately to figure out what the hell just happened, and starts down the stars with him close behind. 

He doesn't touch her but she can feel him there and it's every bit as confusing. 

 

 

 

 

For Dani Reese breakfast usually means coffee, and maybe a muffin if she can be bothered. 

At Crews' place it means fruit. But not fruit like when she was in high school and would just grab an apple on her way out the door; it's more of a platter, piled high with apples, oranges, melon, strawberries, kiwi fruit, several personal pineapples – and she can't help a small smile at that – and lord knows what else because she didn't even know that so many varieties of fruit even _existed_. 

She stands on one side of his kitchen bench, with him on the other just like the night before, and stares at the mountain of fruit in front of her. 

“You should eat more fruit,” he tells her, pushing the plate toward her with a smile. 

And when he smiles at her like that she can't remember a single good reason for why doesn't eat fruit. So this time, as with the night before, she does. 

(It turns out Dani Reese actually quite likes fruit.)

 

 

 

 

 

She spends the following days in hibernation, trying to ignore the urge to visit Crews again. 

(It's the urge that's the problem. She can't remember craving something so much since the blow and that scares her. She doesn't want Charlie to be her next addiction.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

When their week is up, Tidwell calls and tells her they've been both been officially cleared for duty and she can return to work the next day.  

She feels two things. 

Dread at the thought of seeing Tidwell because everything about their relationship has changed for her and after avoiding him for two weeks she knows now that she's going to break his heart. Surprisingly, that thought actually bothers her. She doesn't want to hurt him. 

But mostly she feels relief because finally she can go back to work and that has to mean that things can finally get back to normal. (It has to.)

Except, Charlie doesn't show up the next day and when she asks Tidwell why, he tells her Crews has taken an extended leave of absence. His voice is bitter as he says it, and she realises she doesn't need to tell him they're over; he knows and he hates Crews for it. 

She sits across from his empty desk all day, catching up on paperwork, and through the whole day her legs bounces up and down on her chair. Her hands shake a little and sometimes she has to remind herself to breathe. She smells gasoline in the air even though she knows it a figment of her imagination. 

What she _wants_ to smell though, is fruit. But there isn't any. In the whole damn building she can't find even an apple. She checks Charlie's draw but it's empty. 

Night falls and Tidwell stands in his doorway, watching her. 

“Go home Dani,” he calls out eventually and his voice is tired and bitter. “I'm sure you've got some place better to be.”

She stands and nods, “Yeah. Night Captain.”

 

 

 

  
She rings his doorbell, jabbing her finger on the button angrily as the door remains shut in front of her. 

She calls his cell but gets no answer, just his voicemail. 

“Crews, it's me. I stopped by your place. I was hoping you had some fruit. Or something. But you're not here. And you didn't come to work today. So I'm gonna go home, where's there's no fruit by the way, and eat a whole carton of ice cream. I just wanted you to know that it's your fault.”

 

 

 

 

  
Three days later her phone rings and it's him. 

“I got your message. Did you really eat a whole carton of ice cream?” he asks, almost disbelievingly.

“Yes,” she answers succinctly.  She's still annoyed at him for disappearing on her like that, just when she was starting to figure out what he means to her.  

“Was it at least a fruit flavoured ice cream?” he queries. 

“No.”

There's silence and it's almost like she can hear him thinking. 

“Hey Reese? Are you mad at me by any chance?”

“What gave it away?”

“Oh.” 

She rolls her eyes, because hearing his voice reminds her that when it comes to Charlie Crews, it's never that he's _trying_ to annoy (or hurt) her, it's just that he's a little oblivious to anything that isn't fruit. Or Zen. Or murder. (Really, he's just a little oblivious to her newly discovered feelings for him and maybe that's not really his fault.)

She breathes out, swallows the last little bit of annoyance she's been holding onto, because the unselfish part of her mind knows that he must have needed this, and says “It's okay Crews. Take whatever time you need.”

She hears him breathe a sigh of relief from the other end of the phone and she smiles at the sound. 

“Thanks Reese,” he tells her and she hears the gratitude in his voice. 

 

 

 

 

Three days later she's sitting on her couch eating ice cream because she can't sleep and because when she went to the market to buy fruit there were so many options she simply turned around and walked straight back out. Buying her own fruit is something she'll have to work up to. 

There's a knock on her door and when she opens it, there's Charlie Crews holding up a bag full of mangoes as if to say, 'I know it's late but I brought fruit so can I come in?' 

And then he says, “I know it's late but if you let me in I'll slice us up these mangoes,” and she laughs because apparently she knows Charlie Crews better than she had ever realised. 

“Come in Crews,” she tells him and he smiles at her as he steps into her apartment. It strikes her that he's only ever been here once and it was under much different circumstances. It feels like a decade a go that he saved her with a 'moment'. 

“Hey Reese,” he says hesitantly, face serious and apprehensive. “Can we go back to catching killers now?”

She wants to laugh but holds it in, instead just giving him a soft smile. 

“Sure Crews.”

He breathes out and then his face breaks out in a wide grin and he quickly says, “Can I drive?”

“No.”

But she smiles as she says it because she knows he's going to be okay – they're going to be okay. 

“Can I kiss you again?” he asks, without hesitation and it takes her a moment to even comprehend the words. 

He steps closer to her, but doesn't let them touch, waiting for her consent this time.

She gives it freely and without doubt. His face tells her all she needs to know: this is where she's supposed to be. 

“Yes.”

 

 

 

  
She never does learn to pick out her own fruit. But with Charlie Crews in her life she doesn't really need to.  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
